Inheritance

Kuchiyose no Jutsu

For the second day running Ino found herself sitting in a tree overlooking one of Konoha's many training grounds hidden amongst the forest that merged with the village at it's boundaries. Yesterday, it had been Asuma who brought herself, Shikamaru and Choji here, to get a glimpse of the ridiculous training regime that the blonde had been putting himself through. Ino hated to admit it, but the only other blonde in their graduating class put her to shame. Since graduation, she had barely even thought about training. As far as she had been concerned - she had made it. She was a ninja, and everything would just fall into place for her. But the news that Shikamaru had nearly been killed on his very first mission, and had only been saved because Naruto, the supposed dead-last, had been around to save him, had quickly put things in perspective for her. She was easily the weakest on her team, would that mean that had it been her, she would have died?

So she had agreed to train, to become stronger. She promised Asuma, and the rest of the team that she would give her all, and she had meant it. She, like Shikamaru, didn't want people to put their lives on the line for her, people to die because she wasn't strong enough to do anything about it. So this morning, she had turned up at her team's usual training ground, for what was to be their first ever real training session. And Asuma hadn't been kidding when he said he'd work them into the ground. He had said from the off that they needed, most of all, to work on their physical fitness. He said theirs was the weakest of all the Genin that had graduated, and was unacceptable for any ninja in the field. So, as a result, he had started by physically grinding them into dust.

Hours and hours of running, changing from sprints to jogs, to a run somewhere in between, had been the start of the hellish regime; followed closely by a series of push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups, and some light sparring with some training weights. Asuma had kept them at it until lunch, giving them a half an hour break to eat and catch their breaths, before going at them all over again. This time, he created three of those Kage Bunshin that Naruto could do, and separated them all, and set about dissecting their fighting style's and abilities, picking apart their taijutsu with crushing efficiency.

Ino was bruised, aching and exhausted, but she wasn't done for the day, and wouldn't be, until she had satiated her curiosity. The subject of which, was now sparring with a strange Inuzuka girl below. They had kicked off with a brief taijutsu exchange, the Inuzuka girl rushing the blonde, and her dogs spreading out around to surround him, and proceeded to attack him in a series of hit and run attacks. The girl attacking, pulling back, followed by each of her dogs attacking from a different and in different patterns. Each attack was blocked or dodged, with what Ino had to admit was a decent level of skill. Naruto's taijutsu had admittedly come on leaps and bounds since he had been in the academy, and from what she could see, the blonde had already eclipsed her in skill by a fair distance.

Suddenly, she caught a glimpse of a grin on the blonde's face, as two of the dogs came at him at once, one from either side. Without hand seals or announcement, two copies of the blonde burst into life, just as the dogs leapt into their respective attacks; and each received a solid kick to the jaw, sending them tumbling back the way they came. Hana, already on the move to follow up on the attack, was surprised enough to hesitate, and Naruto used the opportunity to press his advantage, and just like that, the roles were reversed. Naruto pressed the Inuzuka girl with a near-constant barrage of attacks, using Kage Bunshin to fend off the advances of the ninja dogs. Without the help of her canines Hana struggled to keep up with the clearly physically superior blonde, and eventually she made her mistake.

Seeing Naruto pull his arm back for a punch, she moved to block, and prepared her counter, totally unprepared for a leg sweep from a Kage Bunshin Naruto had created behind her. The leg sweep took her left leg out from under her and left her stumbling back, trying to keep her footing, but the original Naruto wasn't about to allow her the opportunity to regain her footing, and landed a solid kick to the centre of her rib cage, sending the girl sprawling backwards across the floor.